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Description | Agenda | Papers & Participants
Spatial and Social Interactions in Economics - Description
Upham Hotel, Santa Barbara, CA
April 4-5, 2003
Empirical analysis of spatial and social interactions by economists was quite limited until about a decade ago, when interest and activity grew on a number of fronts simultaneously. These include the study of peer effects within schools and classrooms, a rebirth of urban economics, the "new" growth theory in macroeconomics based on education externalities, the development of theoretical models of social learning and information cascades, and the application of the techniques of "labor-metrics" – a research style developed in labor economics – to empirical questions in epidemiology and environmental economics.
Despite this resurgence of interest in spatial and social interactions within economics, GIS and related advances in geography have to date made relatively few inroads into the economics profession. The goal of this workshop is to assess the possible contributions of these advances to economic research. This will be accomplished by bringing together cutting-edge researchers on spatial and social interactions in the economics profession, having them present examples of their current research, exposing them to information on new developments in GIS and new spatial econometric software, and starting a discussion on possible uses of these tools, as well as further development of these tools, within economics.
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